Archibald

Not directly related, but supposedly Bullet Club block part was actually a thing and lots of people showed up:

I don't get it, look at RoH TV and look at their MSG stuff, to me it looks fairly obvious that more money/effort went into MSG even if they ended up doing many mistakes. Pretty much. Hot takes about RoH shitting up the show had started already when card was announced.

Everyone understands that working with AAA means that CMLL is likely not interested in working with you and if CMLL does not want to work with you then NJPW also probably does not want to work with you and then RevPro is probably also not interested. You can add RoH to that chain as well or you can works backwards from RoH since they have their own reasons to dislike AEW and they'll bitch to their partners about it. So basically NJPW would likely have to dump not only RoH, but CMLL as well in order to work with AEW. So to me it reminds of politics. You declare one thing, do something else completely and then pretend that it is others who are at fault for not working with you.

So few things that pop to me: NJPW is giving more stuff for Juniors. Tag titles are main eventing one show and Dragon Lee/Ishimori are main eventing over Cobb/Taichi. Thuo I'd guess that might be more due to Cobb not being that well known to Japanese audience. White is in interesting spot. On one hand beating Goto might lead to rematch with Okada. On the other hand Juice is going (or at least I hope so) beat another BC member in his USA title run so logical next step would be for Juice to face White. But then Mikey is also having a match against Chase, in theory I guess Mikey could win and ask for a "friendly" title match against Juice, kinda like what Trent did. I know that Okada promised to give Sanada a title shot during his NJ Cup promo, but it feels a bit weird. Sanada is already 0-5 against Okada so getting another L will be painful. And with how cards are structured it looks like Evil might beat Ishii and get a title shot at Okada? Is Evil big enough to get Dominion main event? NJPW talked a lot about Heisei era ending and new era, if I'm not mistaken, starts at May so you'd think that this probably will somehow play into main Dontaku cards? If this is transitional period and we already got two 0 defences title reigns in these uncertain times then what is one more 0 defences reign? And maybe new era starts with new face as the champion? Big matches are spread out thru the cards and some big names are either missing or not doing much like Tanahashi, Naito and Suzuki. Ibushi with ZSJ will also be gone, if I'm not mistaken, after their title match. Will be interesting to see if attendance doesn't suffer due to that. On the other hand it probably shows at what level NJPW is in Japan that they feel comfortable with this stuff and that at the same time it looks like it is pushing storylines further.

Lots of cards so I'll just post key things here. Sengoku Lord April 20th: Mikey Nicholls/Chase Owens Juice/Bad Luck Fale for USA title Ibushi/ZSJ for IC title Road to Dontaku April 22th: Taguchi/Yano/Makabe vs GoD/Hikuleo for trios titles Kuni SENGOKU EMAKI April 26th: Sho/Yoh vs Shingo/Bushi for Jr. Tag titles Hi no Kuni April 29th: Yano/Makabe vs GoD for tag titles Goto/Jay White Dontaku Day 1 May 3th: Cobb/Taichi for NEVER title Dragon Lee/Ishimori for Jr. title Dontaku Day 2 May 4th: Dragon Lee/Ospreay vs Ishimori/X, this will probably be El Phantasmo's debut Evil/Ishii Okada/Sanda for heavyweight title Since there are lots of cards it is possible that I missed something, but I think I got most of the relevant stuff here. Edit: added likely El Phantasmo's debut match.

I have seen few matches with Kross and anyone else feels like he is all "presence" and no substance?

I have seen few matches with Kross and anyone else feels like he is all "presence" and no substance?

Or not seeing eye to eye with new regime. I don't follow Impact any longer, but once he lost the belt and was out of title picture he started having weird feuds that I thought were, at best, irrelevant and from spoilers that I have read it looked like each new program was worse than earlier.

Overall loved the show, didn't watch it live since I want to sleep at nights. Production had issues all along the show and I agree that RoH's stuff suffered more due to that, but do you people really watch RoH shows? I thought this was probably their best producing show that I saw in a while. Which is not to say that it was great, but RoH's presentation is usually very bland/bad so this, in my opinion, was a minor improvement. Basically my point is that if you watch RoH regularly and enjoy their content then I don't really get how you could be underwhelmed by what they delivered. Rumble, don't care. Muta was a bit surprise, but other than that it was whatever like it always is. I think they said something about winner getting RoH title shot so Kenny winning it made sense. Cobb/Ospreay was fun and I'm glad that Cobb won, but at the same time I don't feel like Cobb is really reaching that next level. I loved Rush/Dalton. Like, I get it, if you paid money to see Rush and you got only 30 seconds of him killing Dalton then you might have reasons to be upset about whole thing. But it continues to build up Rush as a top guy that can kill you if you make a mistake and continues building Dalton's story with him slowly turning heel. Women's match was ok, I probably will forget it couple of days later, but it was relatively short and I didn't mind it. Post match angle I thought was also kinda okay, but it dragged too long. Should have happened faster. Street fight was a mess, but thats what was expected considering who were involved with it. Haskins, Shane and Silas not being in Rumble also kinda gave away, at least to me, that this isn't going to be a simple 1vs1 match. On the positive side, good to hear that Flip's injury was a work. Jr. three-way was high spots sprint and it worked, but I would have preferred Dragon Lee/Ishimori. Thou it looks like we'll still get and it probably will have more focus on some Dontaku card than it did here so maybe it's all good in the end. 4-way tag match was whatever honestly. I think it might be my least favourite match after the rumble. Two confusing angles at the end didn't help things either. Loved Tanahashi/ZSJ, but I really hoped that Tanahashi would win. It would have nicely led to rematch at later date with some filler in between. But whats next now for both of them? Naito/Ibushi was great. They had some weird stuff as others have mentioned, but it didn't really detract from the match. I wonder, maybe Ibushi/ZSJ comes out of this and eventually Ibushi/Ospreay for that UK show? Liked RoH world title match, but probably would have liked it more if it was a bit shorter. Loved that Taven won in the end, was afraid that they'll be afraid to finally crown him due to massively pro-Marty crowd, but it was right decision and I'm interested to see in whats going to happen next. Main event was great even if it is not clear whats next for Okada.

Angles could have been worked out better, no argument there, but I think that RoH kinda needs to show that they are alive and things are happening. As for NJPW dumping them, I'm not sure why this would really be the case since RoH didn't really do anything worse than they usually do.

I don't know, his strong man gimmick might not work that well considering that AJPW has more big guys. Like, what he is going to do exactly against Ishikawa? On the other hand, moving outside of stongman gimmick might be good for him overall.

Probably correct decision by Elgin then. While NJPW provided him "safe space" they wouldn't really push him and he'd stay in midcard or undercard forever. Now he has opportunity to rebuild himself somewhere and if it works out then NJPW would likely move him up the card.

I don't know, is there any actual value in W-1? NJPW can probably just "steal" anyone they are interested in. I guess they could fill out some shows with "invasion" angle, but would anyone really care?

I think he might become more heelish, but I doubt that they'll fully go with it. Kinda like Nakajima now is sadistic asshole, but when he was fighting against Hooligans he was clearly a face. I doubt that they'll cheat, but they'll fuck you up real bad.

So is PAC established star or is he taking jobs from locals?

Or is Flip working us?

Makes sense considering that they'll have a title match. I just hope that Ospreay doesn't scream a lot when Suzuki will start hitting him.

Ok, so card looks stacked and I don't agree with some smark takes like that this looks like good NJPW show with some RoH crap added. Only questionable thing is Bully's open challenge, everything else looks fine to me. Speculation mode: I think I saw some rumours about more Stardom wrestlers being on the show here so it was either false or another match will be added or maybe they'll do a run-in during WoH title match. It is weird that they are doing third Iwatani/Klein match in few months so I wonder if match won't end with DQ due to run in that would eventually lead to Iwatani and Klein teaming up. Most obvious pick for Bully's open challenge is Flip, but they did that match few months ago and I'm not sure if Bully/Flip is really MSG worthy match, ignoring hot takes that Bully shouldn't be here at all. So I'm thinking that maybe this will be Bully/Juice for USA title? Juice doesn't have a match yet and it would be weird for USA champ to not have a match here. And he spends lots of time in RoH now so it could build towards something else (or could be built up in next RoH show that is happening before MSG). I saw other theories about Ishii or Suzuki, but I think that would be totally random and I'm not sure how well they could really mesh with Bully. I think that Tanahashi might win RevPro title. It would give him something new to do and could lead to a rematch for that upcoming NJPW UK show. Sure, nobody wants to see RevPro shit there, but I think that nobody would really complain if it was semi-main or something like that. Evil/Sanada to me look like biggest names in that tag team clusterfuck. I think it could be their moment that could lead to rematches with Brody/PCO or Briscoes. Plus Evil started feuding with Ishii on last day of NJ Cup. This could also lead to, lets say, Evil/Sanada vs Ishii/Goto and singles matches as a build up. Kinda like we had with ZSJ/Suzuki earlier. Probably biggest name not to have a match here is... Shingo? I could accept arguments for Suzuki, but since G1 Suzuki has been slowly moving down the card and I think that they'd have no problems with placing him in the rumble. Shingo on the other hand is popular and super protected. So basically, what I'm saying is that I think that Shingo is winning Rumble.

I think I'll post this here since most people here care more about NJPW side of things than RoH, but if mods think that this should be in another place then they can probably move it there. Anyway, announced matches: Honor Rumble: only announced name so far is Liger. Ospreay/Cobb in title vs title match Castle/Rush Iwatani/Klein for WoH title Bully Rey open challenge for Chicago Street Fight Ishimori/Dragon Lee/Bandido for Jr. Heavyweight title Briscoes, PCO/Brody, Evil/Sanada, GoD in 4-way clusterfuck for RoH and IGWP tag titles ZSJ/Tanahashi for RevPro title Naito/Ibushi for IC title Taven/Lethal/Scurll for RoH title White/Okada for heavyweight title

I'm not sure that Naito needs to be built up for anything. He probably could have just declared that he is going to challenge White at MSG and that NJ Cup winner can take a hike, and crowd would have chanted "NAITO! NAITO! NAITO!".

I don't really understand how Coast to Coast eventually leaving will show that Delirious is bad booker. They are average at best tag team and there is no reason why they should get a win over RoH' world champ and one of the mid-upper card guys. Honestly they are lucky that they were brought back after their previous dreadful run.

I liked Chase/Juice for what it was and I hope that match with Fale doesn't happen. Honestly what irks me about Sanada's submission is not that it looks bad, but that it doesn't really make sense how he uses it. Like I can kinda get it that he does moonsault after it because lets say he wants to finish the match in style. But here at one point he released Okada and just went for a pin. I don't really get it. Other than that I liked what I saw and Okada desperately holding Sanada's leg was top stuff. But then, I'm not sure whats next. I don't really see many options at the moment for another Okada's title reign, but at the same time I can't see him losing at MSG either.

Great semi-final matches. Really loved that bridge into bridge counter.

Silas signed contract at the end of the 2018 so it is unlikely that he is on his way out.

So, umm, Ishii/Okada and Tanahashi/Sanada in Sanada's hometown next. Sanada/Cabana sucked, I hope that I'll never see Cabana in NJPW again. Also, they kinda teased Taichi/Ospreay in undercard, I wonder how that plays into MSG and Cobb challenging Ospreay? I hope it is not a triple threat with Taichi eating a pin.